


Ven'Arlas

by alynshir



Series: she is my tomorrow [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: 2nd person POV, Antiva, F/F, Fluff, Marriage, Romance, Second Person, Solas makes a sneaky cameo, Wedding, Wedding Jitters, flemeth has her nose in everyone's business like wtf m8, ft. two other Lavellans being gay together, otp: vena ara mah'vir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3533915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alynshir/pseuds/alynshir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a Seeker has wedding jitters, a Divine is cryptic, a dwarf is amused, and a Revered Mother is somewhat inspirational.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ven'Arlas

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Dragon Age.

It wasn't planned. 

You were never very good at planning, not as a child, not as a youth, not as a Seeker, and it still holds true today, in this moment - you are impulsive, brash, and it has gotten in the way. This is so completely something that you had wanted to plan. Not that you had really ever wanted it before recently, but now that you do, you're regretting not planning it yourself. Having Josephine at least help with something turned into Josephine planning the entire thing and somehow financing a journey to Antiva City with the famed Crows themselves as escorts. How that had happened, you have no idea.

"Cassandra," Leliana says, and she's smiling knowingly at you. "Stop worrying."

"I am not worrying," you protest, although you see her raise her eyebrows and you are reminded for the umpteenth time that the spymaster is the farthest thing present from an idiot. You shift uneasily, and your feet slide on the sand. Leliana laughs - a sound you haven't heard in a while - and turns away from you, looking across the sea.

You think she looks happier than you have ever seen her, and perhaps it is because she is finally somewhere that the sun can shine without melting icicles. Indeed, you can see the sea reflected in the eyes some thought frozen for good, and it strikes you as a spring thaw that was all too welcome. She looks comfortable in her own skin as the Divine who lifts her face to the sun, Divine Victoria - which she has insisted you, of all people, do not call her - and it is a wild change from the spymaster who sought solace in the shadows.

"Everything will go as you want it to," she says, still not looking at you. "You are at the end of your tale."

"Doesn't that mean I am going to die?" you retort. Leliana snorts. 

"No. It means that there are no more plot twists to get in your way. You can be happy now. Without any more conflict."

You don't say anything else, because you know you won't get an answer. The Divine is already slipping back down the beach towards the small gathering of people below your lonely little section of sand. You are left alone again, adrift in the tiny desert along the ocean, but you know - as does your stomach, what with its infestation of grasshoppers who will not stop leaping - that it is not for long. 

You look over, from your isolated island of a dune with its long bleached grass tapping a tune on your ankles. You see Josephine's silhouette when you glance towards the veiled pagoda tucked beside the Montilyet estate, you see Vivienne's too, and you can see a smaller, slighter shadow that you know belongs to someone else. Someone important. That very someone that you are standing here waiting for. 

You sigh. They are taking forever and a day, and you are starting to get nervous, Maker forbid you admit it. You are still alone on your dune, and you hear some conversation drift up to you. You tear your eyes away from the triumvirate in the pagoda and busy yourself with eavesdropping. A rude habit, you always thought, but now you think you could care less about rudeness. 

"What is Lady Pentaghast wearing?" you hear an affronted noble ask, and you stiffen before you look down and see that it is an old friend of your family's from Nevarra and that she is grinning so smugly with her gold-capped teeth at your distant cousin, it is as if she knows you are listening. "Because it is a vast improvement from the Winter Ball last year. It makes her eyes look like amber chips, don't you think?"

At any rate, you certainly prefer the clothes you are wearing now: steady fabric, light and not grimy on your skin and a pleasing shade of blue with golden thread that you thought would be garish but actually looks nicer than you are willing to verbally admit. The Winter Ball was in fact a travesty, and the suit was itchy and awkward on your shoulders.

Your ears pick up another thread of conversation; a higher voice this time, with an elven lilt that you find you have grown accustomed to over the past year and a half. This one isn't the one that plays like some persistent bard's mantra in your mind, though - this one is less familiar to your ears that are used to elven braided with Orlesian. Your eyes locate the speaker - a slight elf with light hair and a bare face, despite her Dalish accent.

"...and did you see the lightning," she was saying, her hand grasping at the arm of another elf with a nicked ear, scarred cheeks and a long braid. "It was purple! There is never purple lightning!"

"I'm glad you're excited, Firefly," the braided elf says. "It's good to see you smiling again."

The bare-faced elf blushes, and you look away. Their business is clearly of a more personal nature, and although you suddenly find yourself extremely intrigued, one glance back over and the elves are clearly oblivious to the world around them apart from each other and that is their business and not yours. You can nearly hear Varric calling you a stuffed-shirt.

"Seeker," a granite voice says, and you turn to see the dwarf himself, looking somewhat uncomfortable on the beach. It is odd, you have to admit, to see him out of his heavy and ridiculously low-cut coat with his precious crossbow not slung across his back for once. He looks taller without the weight of the crossbow hunching him over, and somewhat lackluster without his beard of chest hair bared for the world to see.

"Before you jump to a thousand conclusions, I just want you to know that as much as I love to, I'm not here to heckle you," he says, his lips curling up into a smirk that makes you instinctively think the opposite. There's something about the way he looks up at you, with unhardened eyes, that says he's telling the truth. 

"Then why are you here?" you ask, and there is no bite to your words like there would have been a year and a half ago, when Breaches tore the sky and grief and fury tore your heart. Varric shrugs.

"Obligatory speech to the 'groom'?" he suggests. "You're not really the groom, but you're here and she's getting fussed over so the speech goes to you. By the way, I didn't know Vivienne could squeal before. The things you learn at weddings."

You are confused for a moment - what obligatory speech is he talking about? But then he just sighs.

"Shit, I don't even have anything written." He shoves his hands into his pockets. "Summary: congrats with Gingersnap, you two are probably gonna be the next Andraste and the Maker from the songs I'm hearing from that bard, don't hurt her or I'll ginger-snap you. Theoretically."

You don't know what to say for a moment. "Thank you," you say slowly after a few heartbeats. He grins roguishly.

"It's going to be great, Seeker. You just wait. Ten years from now we'll all be grey and creaky and you'll look back on today as the best day of your life. And then I'll send you another book with a plot twist that will make you angry and laugh as you try to kill me. And she'll be there laughing too, and it'll be great."

You don't know what it is about this somewhat fuddled reassurance, but it somehow alleviates the worst of your worries, leaving only the trivial matters for you to fret about. You smile - a small, close lipped smile, but a smile nevertheless. Have you ever smiled at Varric? If you have, you cannot remember when or why. From the look on Varric's face, it's a surprise to him too. After an awkward pause that somehow isn't quite as awkward as it definitely could have been, he glances back towards the pagoda and then smirks at you.

"Don't piss your pants when you see her. I'll be getting back to the people. Apparently Hawke wants to have a word with me. Something about 'improper conduct at a wedding' and 'you shouldn't be THIS drunk already without me'."

Before you fully realise that Hawke - the Champion! That Hawke! - is at your wedding, Varric is gone and has vanished amongst the sea of people, leaving you alone at the top of your sand dune fortress. 

You hear footsteps in the sand crunching behind you, and when you turn you nearly have a heart attack because for a second, you thought you were looking at your Most Holy, the one you associated with the Sunburst throne until recently. But another second tells you with equal parts relief and disappointment that it is simply Mother Giselle, with the soft smile of hers curving her lips and crinkling her eyes. She is wearing her Chantry garb, sans the habit - she has pretty hair, a shade darker than her skin with a few streaks of silver, even visible when twisted into the wreath of a braid pinned to her head. Her eyes twinkle with the sunlight flickering off the sea and she looks at you like you think your someone might have done once, a long time ago when you were still a child.

"You look nervous," she states, and she puts a hand on your shoulder as you look outwards towards the people and the pagoda. It is somewhat comforting and you find that you relax slightly at her motherly touch.

"I simply...do not wish things to go wrong," you say, and you figure you must sound ridiculous. Mother Giselle laughs softly, a sound like the whirring of a dove.

"It is not uncommon to feel as such before you are married. Your whole life is about to change, is it not?" 

She moves so she is by your side. 

"You know, the night before I became anointed as a Revered Mother, I nearly ran away."

You turn to her, surprised. She laughs, ducking her head in goodnatured embarrassment - a state you have never been able to achieve.

"I did not think I could do it. Be responsible, inspirational, together, lead a congregation of my own closer to the Maker...it all sounded like too much too soon. So the night before, I gathered my belongings and left in the middle of the night."

"Really?" Somehow you can't understand someone so suited to a task, feeling as if it is too much. But then, you might have felt the same way in her shoes. Being a Seeker always came naturally to you - although it was hard, you never wanted to run away for fear of impending duty. But had someone dressed you up in Chantry robes and asked you to be kind and gentle to everyone you met...You shudder. It would not have gone well. 

"I tried, at least. I only made it out of the courtyard gates before I crashed right into an elderly woman. We both fell to the ground, and I helped her up, apologising profusely. She brushed it off and merely handed me the things I had dropped. 'Running away, are we?' she asked, and I was mortified. She did not scold me, however, as I thought she would; she merely laughed! She said, 'My daughter did the same thing when she realised she was becoming strong.'"

Mother Giselle sighs as she thinks back. You wonder what else her tired eyes have seen.

"Then she asked me why I was running. I told her - for what had I to lose from it? By then the sky was lightening and I knew that my chance to run had been lost. The old woman told me something I would not soon forget.

'You stand on the precipice of change,' she said. 'You fear the inevitable plummet into the unknown. But when it comes, do not hesitate to leap. It is only when you fall that you learn whether you can fly.'"

Mother Giselle smiles.

"And now I pass the wisdom on to you. This is your unknown, Cassandra. You will leap, and you will fly. You and the Inquisitor will soar higher than any have before. Do tell me what the stars look like when you reach them, will you?"

You hear the chatterings of the people for a moment more, and then as if silenced by some sort of spell - you wouldn't put it past Vivienne, honestly, or Dorian - they all cease their conversations. Everyone turns towards the pagoda.

Now there are only two silhouettes left within. A slight one - the one that makes your heart leap - and a taller one. The latter gives you pause; the silhouette is clearly that of a man, - an elven man, you see, when the light shifts to reveal pointed ears - and last you had noticed, the only people in the pagoda had been women. The pair embrace; a tight hug, one of friendship rather than romance, and the man's shadow vanishes. This confuses you briefly, but you do not have time to wonder at it because then the shimmering veil of the pagoda parts. Sunset hair glows with the first ray of light that hits it, and you take a deep breath as olive green eyes meet yours.

Here is where you leap, you think, and the wind may just be right for you to fly your way home.

**Author's Note:**

> Depending on interest, I may do a second part with, you know, the ACTUAL wedding.


End file.
